Russiais bringing her war with China to a close: a number of military
districts have been mobilised, hundreds of millions of rubles have been
spent, tens of thousands of troops have been dispatched to China, a number
of battles have been fought and a number of victories won—true, not
so much over regular enemy troops, as over Chinese insurgents and,
particularly, over the unarmed Chinese populace, who were drowned or
killed, with no holding back from the slaughter of women and children, not
to speak of the looting of palaces, homes, and shops. The Russian
Government, together with the press that kowtows to it, is celebrating a
victory and rejoicing over the fresh exploits of the gallant soldiery,
rejoicing at the victory of European culture over Chinese barbarism and
over the fresh successes of Russia’s “civilising mission” in
the Far East.

Butthe voices of the class-conscious workers, of the advanced
representatives of the many millions of the working people, are not heard
amid this rejoicing. And yet, it is the working people who bear the brunt
of the victorious new campaigns, it is working people who are sent to the
other end of the world, from whom increased taxes are extorted to cover
the millions expended. Let us, therefore, see: What attitude should the
socialists adopt towards this war? In whose interests is it being fought?
What is the real nature of the policy now being pursued by the Russian
Government?

Ourgovernment asserts first of all that it is not waging war against China;
that it is merely suppressing a
rebellion, pacifying rebels; that it is helping the lawful government of
China to re-establish law and order. True, war has not been declared, but
this does not change the situation a bit, because war is being waged
nonetheless. What made the Chinese attack Europeans, what caused the
rebellion which the British, French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, etc.,
are so zealously crushing? “The hostility of the yellow race
towards the white race,” “the Chinese hatred for European culture
and
civilisation”— answer
the supporters of the war. Yes! It is true the Chinese hate the Europeans,
but which Europeans do they hate, and why? The Chinese do not hate the
European peoples, they have never had any quarrel with them—they
hate the European capitalists and the European governments obedient to
them. How can the Chinese not hate those who have come to China solely for
the sake of gain; who have utilised their vaunted civilisation solely for
the purpose of deception, plunder, and violence; who have waged wars
against China in order to win the right to trade in opium with which to
drug the people (the war of England and France with China in 1856); and
who hypocritically carried their policy of plunder under the guise of
spreading Christianity? The bourgeois governments of Europe have long been
conducting this policy of plunder with respect to China, and now they have
been joined by the autocratic Russian Government. This policy of plunder
is usually called a colonial policy. Every country in which capitalist
industry develops rapidly has very soon to seek colonies, i.e., countries
in which industry is weakly developed, in which a more or less patriarchal
way of life still prevails, and which can serve as a market for
manufactured goods and a source of high profits. For the sake of the
profit of a handful of capitalists, the bourgeois governments have waged
endless wars, have sent regiments to die in unhealthy tropical countries,
have squandered millions of money extracted from the people, and have
driven the peoples in the colonies to desperate revolts or to death from
starvation. We need only recall the rebellion of the native peoples
against the British in
India[1]
and the famine that prevailed there, or think of the war the English are
now waging against the Beers.

Andnow the European capitalists have placed their rapacious paws upon
China, and almost the first to do so was the Russian Government, which now
so loudly proclaims its “disinterestedness.” It
“disinterestedly” took Port Arthur away from China and began
to build a railway to Manchuria under the protection of Russian
troops. One after another the European governments began feverishly to
loot, or, as they put it, to “rent,” Chinese territory, giving good
grounds for the talk of the partition of China. If we are to call things
by their right names, we must say that the European governments (the
Russian Government among the very first) have already started to partition
China. However, they have not begun this partitioning openly, but
stealthily, like thieves. They began to rob China as ghouls rob corpses,
and when the seeming corpse attempted to resist, they flung themselves
upon it like savage beasts, burning down whole villages, shooting,
bayonetting, and drowning in the Amur River unarmed inhabitants, their
wives, and their children. And all these Christian exploits are
accompanied by howls against the Chinese barbarians who dared to raise
their hands against the civilised Europeans. The occupation of Niuchuang
and the moving of Russian troops into Manchuria are temporary measures,
declares the autocratic Russian Government in its circular note of August
12, 1900 addressed to the Powers; these measures “are called forth
exclusively by the necessity to repel the aggressive operations of Chinese
rebels”; they “cannot in the least be regarded as evidence of
any selfish plans, which are totally alien to the policy of the Imperial
Government.”

PoorImperial Government! So Christianly unselfish, and yet so unjustly
maligned! Several years ago it unselfishly seized Port Arthur, and now it
is unselfishly seizing Manchuria; it has unselfishly flooded the frontier
provinces of China with hordes of contractors, engineers, and officers,
who, by their conduct, have roused to indignation even the Chinese, known
for their docility. The Chinese workers employed in the construction of
the Chinese railway had to exist on a wage of ten kopeks a day—is
this not unselfish on Russia’s part?

Howis our government’s senseless policy in China to be explained? Who
benefits by it? The benefit goes to a handful of capitalist magnates who
carry on trade with China, to a handful of factory owners who manufacture
goods for the Asian market, to a handful of con tractors who are now
piling up huge profits on urgent war orders (factories producing war
equipment, supplies for the troops, etc., are now operating at full
capacity and are engaging hundreds of new workers). This policy is of
benefit to a handful of nobles who occupy high posts in the civil and
military services. They need adventurous policies, for these provide them
with opportunities for promotion, for making a career and gaining fame by
their “exploits.” In the interests of this handful of capitalists
and bureaucratic scoundrels, our government unhesitatingly sacrifices the
interests of the entire people. And in this case, as always, the
autocratic tsarist government has proved itself to be a government of
irresponsible bureaucrats servilely cringing before the capitalist
magnates and nobles.

Whatbenefits do the Russian working class and the labouring people
generally obtain from the conquests in China? Thousands of ruined
families, whose breadwinners have been sent to the war; an enormous
increase in the national debt and the national expenditure; mounting
taxation; greater power for the capitalists, the exploiters of the
workers; worse conditions for the workers; still greater mortality among
the peasantry; famine in Siberia—this is what the Chinese war
promises and is already bringing. The entire Russian press, all the
newspapers and periodicals are kept in a state of bondage; they dare not
print anything without permission of the government officials. This is the
reason for the lack of precise information as to what the Chinese war is
costing the people; but there is no doubt that it requires the expenditure
of many hundreds of millions of rubles. It has come to our
knowledge that the government, by an unpublished decree, handed out the
tidy sum of a hundred and fifty million rubles for the purpose of waging
the war. In addition to this, current expenditures on the war absorb
one million rubles every three or four days, and these terrific
sums are
being squandered by a government which, haggling over every kopek, has
steadily cut down grants to the famine- stricken peasantry; which can find
no money for the people’s education; which, like any kulak, sweats the
workers in the government factories, sweats the lower employees in the
post offices, etc.!

Ministerof Finance Witte declared that on January 1, 1900, there were two
hundred and fifty million rubles available in the treasury. Now this money
is gone, it has been spent on the war. The government is seeking loans, is
increasing taxation, is refusing necessary expenditures because of the
lack of money, and is putting a stop to the building of railways. The
tsarist government is threatened with bankruptcy, and yet it is plunging
into a policy of conquest—a policy which not only demands the
expenditure of enormous sums of money, but threatens to plunge us into
still more dangerous wars. The European states that have flung themselves
upon China are already beginning to quarrel over the division of the
booty, and no one can say how this quarrel will end.

Butthe policy of the tsarist government in China is not only a mockery of
the interests of the people—its aim is to corrupt the political
consciousness of the masses. Governments that maintain themselves in power
only by means of the bayonet, that have constantly to re strain or
suppress the indignation of the people, have long realised the truism that
popular discontent can never be removed and that it is necessary to divert
the discontent from the government to some other object. For example,
hostility is being stirred up against the Jews; the gutter press carries
on Jew-baiting campaigns, as if the Jewish workers do not suffer in
exactly the same way as the Russian workers from the oppression of capital
and the police government. At the present time, the press is conducting a
campaign against the Chinese; it is howling about the savage yellow race
and its hostility towards civilisation, about Russia’s tasks of
enlightenment, about the enthusiasm with which the Russian soldiers go
into battle, etc., etc. Journalists who crawl on their bellies before the
government and the money-bags are straining every nerve to rouse the
hatred of the people against China. But the
Chinese people have at no time and in no way oppressed the Russian
people. The Chinese people suffer from the same evils as those from
which the Russian people suffer—they suffer from an Asiatic
government that squeezes taxes from the starving peasantry and that
suppresses every aspiration towards liberty by military force; they
suffer from the oppression of capital, which has penetrated into the
Middle Kingdom.

TheRussian working class is beginning to move out of the state of
political oppression and ignorance in which the masses of the people are
still submerged. Hence, the duty of all class-conscious workers is to rise
with all their might against those who are stirring up national hatred and
diverting the attention of the working people from their real enemies. The
policy of the tsarist government in China is a criminal policy which is
impoverishing, corrupting, and oppressing the people more than ever. The
tsarist government not only keeps our people in slavery but sends them to
pacify other peoples who rebel against their slavery (as was the case in
1849 when Russian troops suppressed the revolution in Hungary). It not
only helps the Russian capitalists to exploit the Russian workers, whose
hands it ties to hold them back from combining and defending themselves,
but it also sends soldiers to plunder other peoples in the interests of a
handful of rich men and nobles. There is only one way in which the new
burden the war is thrusting upon the working people can be removed, and
that is the convening of an assembly of representatives of the people,
which would put an end to the autocracy of the government and compel it to
have regard for interests other than those solely of a gang of courtiers.

Notes

[1]
The reference is to the uprising for national liberation that began in
India in 1857. The insurrection was suppressed by British troops in 1859.